Download or read book Grief Like a River written by Mea Smith and published by . This book was released on 2021-07-10 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Even if the river dries to only morning dew and dust, the scar of it remains in the earth If the circumstances were prime, it could fill again, and that would be okay because I know why it flows now." Grief Like a River bares the iterative, complex process of grief through sincere, raw poetry. Smith's tender honesty delicately guides the reader through the human experience of loss. Her debut collection does not claim to be a solution or the final word on the matter. Rather, her personal revelations and inquiries offer companionship for those who have faced grief and for those who desire an example of hope. *This book includes a Reader's Guide*
Download or read book Crossing the River written by Carol Smith and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful exploration of grief and resilience following the death of the author's son that combines memoir, reportage, and lessons in how to heal Everyone deals with grief in their own way. Helen Macdonald found solace in training a wild goshawk. Cheryl Strayed found strength in hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. For Carol Smith, a Pulitzer Prize nominated journalist struggling with the sudden death of her seven-year-old son, Christopher, the way to cross the river of sorrow was through work. In Crossing the River, Smith recounts how she faced down her crippling loss through reporting a series of profiles of people coping with their own intense challenges, whether a life-altering accident, injury, or diagnosis. These were stories of survival and transformation, of people facing devastating situations that changed them in unexpected ways. Smith deftly mixes the stories of these individuals and their families with her own account of how they helped her heal. General John Shalikashvili, once the most powerful member of the American military, taught Carol how to face fear with discipline and endurance. Seth, a young boy with a rare and incurable illness, shed light on the totality of her son's experiences, and in turn helps readers see that the value of a life is not measured in days. Crossing the River is a beautiful and profoundly moving book, an unforgettable journey through grief toward hope, and a valuable, illuminating read for anyone coping with loss.
Download or read book The Smell of Rain on Dust written by Martín Prechtel and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Beautifully written and wise … [Martin Prechtel] offers stories that are precious and life-sustaining. Read carefully, and listen deeply."—Mary Oliver, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Inspiring hope, solace, and courage in living through our losses, author Martín Prechtel, trained in the Tzutujil Maya shamanic tradition, shares profound insights on the relationship between grief and praise in our culture--how the inability that many of us have to grieve and weep properly for the dead is deeply linked with the inability to give praise for living. In modern society, grief is something that we usually experience in private, alone, and without the support of a community. Yet, as Prechtel says, "Grief expressed out loud for someone we have lost, or a country or home we have lost, is in itself the greatest praise we could ever give them. Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses." Prechtel explains that the unexpressed grief prevalent in our society today is the reason for many of the social, cultural, and individual maladies that we are currently experiencing. According to Prechtel, "When you have two centuries of people who have not properly grieved the things that they have lost, the grief shows up as ghosts that inhabit their grandchildren." These "ghosts," he says, can also manifest as disease in the form of tumors, which the Maya refer to as "solidified tears," or in the form of behavioral issues and depression. He goes on to show how this collective, unexpressed energy is the long-held grief of our ancestors manifesting itself, and the work that can be done to liberate this energy so we can heal from the trauma of loss, war, and suffering. At base, this "little book," as the author calls it, can be seen as a companion of encouragement, a little extra light for those deep and noble parts in all of us.
Download or read book Gold written by Barbara Crooker and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2013-06-10 with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Barbara Crooker's new book Gold focuses on one of the most profound life-altering experiences possible: losing one's mother. This collection is an elegy, not just to the speaker's mother, but to a lost Eden that cannot be reclaimed. Beginning with a series of lyrics set in autumn, the poems become more narrative, recounting the long illness of Crooker's mother, her death, and the profound journey along the shores of grief. Throughout, Crooker is aware of the complexity and strength of the mother/daughter relationship and the chasm that this loss opens. The book includes other themes: poems about aging and the body, the loss of friends, the difficulties and joys in a long-term marriage, and always, the subtle ways faith influences the way Crooker experiences life. Her work has great scope, spanning the globe from rural Pennsylvania to Ireland, and reaching not just within herself but also outside of herself, to ekphrastic poems on the paintings of Gorky, Manet, Matisse, and others. This is the book of a mature writer, one who demonstrates an awareness of our own impermanence, our brokenness, and one who knows that if our parents go before us, we will have to learn to live with loss. In this book, we see the redemptive power of poetry itself to heal and to console.
Download or read book Finding Meaning written by David Kessler and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking new work, David Kessler—an expert on grief and the coauthor with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross of the iconic On Grief and Grieving—journeys beyond the classic five stages to discover a sixth stage: meaning. In 1969, Elisabeth Kübler Ross first identified the stages of dying in her transformative book On Death and Dying. Decades later, she and David Kessler wrote the classic On Grief and Grieving, introducing the stages of grief with the same transformative pragmatism and compassion. Now, based on hard-earned personal experiences, as well as knowledge and wisdom earned through decades of work with the grieving, Kessler introduces a critical sixth stage. Many people look for “closure” after a loss. Kessler argues that it’s finding meaning beyond the stages of grief most of us are familiar with—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—that can transform grief into a more peaceful and hopeful experience. In this book, Kessler gives readers a roadmap to remembering those who have died with more love than pain; he shows us how to move forward in a way that honors our loved ones. Kessler’s insight is both professional and intensely personal. His journey with grief began when, as a child, he witnessed a mass shooting at the same time his mother was dying. For most of his life, Kessler taught physicians, nurses, counselors, police, and first responders about end of life, trauma, and grief, as well as leading talks and retreats for those experiencing grief. Despite his knowledge, his life was upended by the sudden death of his twenty-one-year-old son. How does the grief expert handle such a tragic loss? He knew he had to find a way through this unexpected, devastating loss, a way that would honor his son. That, ultimately, was the sixth state of grief—meaning. In Finding Meaning, Kessler shares the insights, collective wisdom, and powerful tools that will help those experiencing loss. Finding Meaning is a necessary addition to grief literature and a vital guide to healing from tremendous loss. This is an inspiring, deeply intelligent must-read for anyone looking to journey away from suffering, through loss, and towards meaning.
Download or read book Where the River Flows written by Rachel Havekost and published by . This book was released on 2021-05-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where the River Flows is an honest, poetic, heartbreaking account of how my divorce catapulted me down a yearlong obsession to find the answer to the burning question I had every single day after my husband asked me for a divorce:"Why?"Was it my inability to show him love like he'd told me? Was it an old attachment wound, still unhealed and bubbling at the surface? Was it the sexual trauma I'd never resolved and carried into our marriage? Was it my very real and frequent urge to end my life? Or was it him? Was it his lack of understanding for my mental illness? His lost patience for me as I tirelessly worked through old wounds in therapy? Stress from the yearlong motorcycle trip of his dreams that I vowed to go on, and did just after our wedding day?As I spiraled myself around this question and fell deeper and deeper into a depression, as the binges became more intense and the purges returned for the first time in years, as the urges to die grew stronger and when I curled myself in a ball on the shower floor, banging my fists against my belly like I'd first done seventeen years before, I started to believe that what my husband said to me in our last few days together might be true: "It's like there are three people in our marriage. You, me, and your Eating Disorder. And sometimes I think you love her more than me."If you or someone you know has struggled with an Eating Disorder, sexual or developmental trauma, depression, anxiety, suicidal thinking, divorce, grief, then it is my hope you will find yourself and your loved ones in the pages of this memoir.You are not alone.
Download or read book Grief s Country written by Gail Griffin and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-15 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intimate look at widowhood. Gail Griffin had only been married for four months when her husband's body was found in the Manistee River, just a few yards from their cabin door. The terrain of memoir is full of stories of grief, though Grief's Country: A Memoir in Pieces is less concerned with the biography of a love affair than with the lived phenomenon of grief itself—what it does to the mind, heart, and body; how it functions almost as an organism. The book's intimacy is at times nearly disarming; its honesty about struggling through grief's country is unfailing. The story is told "in pieces" in that it is ten essays of varying forms, punctuated by four original poems, that examine facets of traumatic grief, memory, and survival. While a reader will perceive a forward trajectory, the book resists anything like a clear chronology, offering a picture of deep grief as something that defies the linear and explodes time. "A Strong Brown God" tells the story of two of Griffin's significant relationships—with her husband, Bob, and with the Manistee River—and includes the history of what drew them all together. "Grief's Country" follows Griffin from the morning after Bob's death through the first disoriented, fractured months of PTSD. "Heartbreak Hotel" takes Griffin on a tragicomical flight the first Christmas after Bob's death to a Jamaican resort—which includes an unscheduled stop at Graceland—where she contemplates the notions of home and haven. Grief's Country will speak directly to anyone who has lost a dearly loved one, offering not one story but ten different faces of grief to contemplate. It will also appeal to general readers of memoir, including teachers and students of nonfiction, especially as it includes a variety of formal models. Those interested in the subject area of death and dying will find it useful as a book that bypasses recovery narratives, truisms, and "stages of grief" to get as close as possible to the experience itself.
Download or read book Disaster Falls written by Stéphane Gerson and published by Crown. This book was released on 2017-01-24 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A haunting chronicle of what endures when the world we know is swept away On a day like any other, on a rafting trip down Utah’s Green River, Stéphane Gerson’s eight-year-old son, Owen, drowned in a spot known as Disaster Falls. That night, as darkness fell, Stéphane huddled in a tent with his wife, Alison, and their older son, Julian, trying to understand what seemed inconceivable. “It’s just the three of us now,” Alison said over the sounds of a light rain and, nearby, the rushing river. “We cannot do it alone. We have to stick together.” Disaster Falls chronicles the aftermath of that day and their shared determination to stay true to Alison’s resolution. At the heart of the book is an unflinching portrait of a marriage tested. Husband and wife grieve in radically different ways that threaten to isolate each of them in their post-Owen worlds. (“He feels so far,” Stéphane says when Alison shows him a selfie Owen had taken. “He feels so close,” she says.) With beautiful specificity, Stéphane shows how they resist that isolation and reconfigure their marriage from within. As Stéphane navigates his grief, the memoir expands to explore how society reacts to the death of a child. He depicts the “good death” of his father, which reveals an altogther different perspective on mortality. He excavates the history of the Green River—rife with hazards not mentioned in the rafting company’s brochures. He explores how stories can both memorialize and obscure a person’s life—and how they can rescue us. Disaster Falls is a powerful account of a life cleaved in two—raw, truthful, and unexpectedly consoling.
Download or read book The River Mouth written by Karen Herbert and published by Fremantle Press. This book was released on 2021-10-01 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifteen-year-old Darren Davies is found facedown in the Weymouth River with a gunshot wound to his chest. The killer is never found and his death remains a mystery. Ten years later, his mother receives a visit from the local police. Sandra' s best friend has been found dead on a remote Pilbara road. And Barbara' s DNA matches the DNA found under Darren' s fingernails. When the investigation into her son' s murder is reopened, Sandra begins to question what she knew about her best friend. As she digs, she discovers that there are many secrets in her small town, and that her murdered son had secrets too.PRAISE FOR THE BOOK'The River Mouth marks the debut of a brilliant new voice in Australian crime fiction.' David Whish-Wilson&‘ The River Mouth is the kind of crime novel which hooks you in from the first chapter and doesn' t let up until the very end.' Better Reading&‘ ... works to gradually ramp up the suspense as Herbert advances her intricate and deftly handled puzzle of a plot ... ' West Australian&‘ ... a stunning debut that will keep you guessing till the
Download or read book River Flow New and Selected Poems Revised Revised written by David Whyte and published by . This book was released on 2012-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This newly revised edition contains the most up to date versions of poems from David's first five volumes of poetry: Songs for Coming Home, Where Many Rivers Meet, Fire in the Earth, The House of Belonging and Everything is Waiting for You, as well as the latest versions of the new poems that originally appeared in the first edition of River Flow.
Download or read book Into This River I Drown written by TJ Klune and published by Dreamspinner Press LLC. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Five years ago, Benji Green lost his beloved father, Big Eddie, when his truck crashed into a river. Everyone called it an accident, but Benji knows it was more. Even years later, he's buried in his grief, throwing himself into managing Big Eddie's convenience store in the small-town of Roseland, Oregon. Surrounded by his mother and three aunts, he lives day to day, struggling to keep his head above water. But Roseland is no ordinary place. With ever more frequent dreams of his father's death and waking visions of feathers on the river's surface, Benji finds his definition of reality bending. He thinks himself haunted; by ghosts or memories, he can no longer tell. Not until a man falls from the sky, leaving the burning imprint of wings on the ground, does Benji begin to understand that the world is more mysterious than he ever imagined--and more dangerous. As uncontrollable forces descend on Roseland, they reveal long-hidden truths about friends, family, and the stranger Calliel--a man Benji can no longer live without.
Download or read book The Wild Edge of Sorrow written by Francis Weller and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and be stretched large by them. As seen on All There Is with Anderson Cooper Noted psychotherapist Francis Weller provides an essential guide for navigating the deep waters of sorrow and loss in this lyrical yet practical handbook for mastering the art of grieving. Describing how Western patterns of amnesia and anesthesia affect our capacity to cope with personal and collective sorrows, Weller reveals the new vitality we may encounter when we welcome, rather than fear, the pain of loss. Through moving personal stories, poetry, and insightful reflections he leads us into the central energy of sorrow, and to the profound healing and heightened communion with each other and our planet that reside alongside it. The Wild Edge of Sorrow explains that grief has always been communal and illustrates how we need the healing touch of others, an atmosphere of compassion, and the comfort of ritual in order to fully metabolize our grief. Weller describes how we often hide our pain from the world, wrapping it in a secret mantle of shame. This causes sorrow to linger unexpressed in our bodies, weighing us down and pulling us into the territory of depression and death. We have come to fear grief and feel too alone to face an encounter with the powerful energies of sorrow. Those who work with people in grief, who have experienced the loss of a loved one, who mourn the ongoing destruction of our planet, or who suffer the accumulated traumas of a lifetime will appreciate the discussion of obstacles to successful grief work such as privatized pain, lack of communal rituals, a pervasive feeling of fear, and a culturally restrictive range of emotion. Weller highlights the intimate bond between grief and gratitude, sorrow and intimacy. In addition to showing us that the greatest gifts are often hidden in the things we avoid, he offers powerful tools and rituals and a list of resources to help us transform grief into a force that allows us to live and love more fully.
Download or read book Rock On written by Susan E. Casey and published by Library Tales Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For those who have endured the heart-wrenching loss of a loved one, "Rock On: Mining for Joy in the Deep River of Sibling Grief" is a powerful and deeply personal memoir that shines a beacon of hope through the darkest of times, showing you that even in the depths of grief, there is a path to healing and renewed joy. Rock On: Mining for Joy in the Deep River of Sibling Grief is about love, loss, grief, and the journey toward hope and reclaiming joy. Rock On focuses solely on sibling loss because it’s a tragedy author Susan Casey experienced in her own life. On Valentine’s Day, 2014, she learned of the horrific and unexpected death of her forty-three-year-old brother Rocky (birth name: Brian) who died while in Hong Kong with his wife and three-and-a-half-year-old daughter.Susan shares her journey, capturing the bond between her and her brother, the shock over his sudden death, and the emotional three-week trip to Asia. When Susan returned home, she was faced with unimaginable grief. In her effort to heal, she interviewed others all over the world that had lost a sibling. Brothers and sisters shared their stories with a vulnerable and open heart, and these stories helped to nudge Susan, step by step, out of the deep river of grief. As she listened, a deeper healing took place, anchoring Susan’s belief that loving and losing far outweigh never loving at all. The stories segue into excerpts from the people she talked to that are relevant to the theme of each chapter. Susan weaves in her memories throughout each story and ends each chapter with her thoughts on the chapter’s theme to provide additional insights to help the reader on their grief journey. Susan’s story and the stories of other people who lost a sibling explore the resiliency of the human spirit after a tragic loss and how their sibling’s death impacted their lives. "Susan Casey takes readers on a harrowing journey from the black river of grief to reclaiming a life with joy and a transformed heart. A must read for anyone who has lost a brother or sister and has embarked on their own healing odyssey." Barbara Walsh, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of August Gale: A Father and Daughter's Journey into the Storm and Sammy in the Sky.
Download or read book Grief and Horses written by Patrick Daly and published by Broadstone Books. This book was released on 2021-11-05 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Patrick Daly indeed writes of both grief and horses (among other animals, all sources of wisdom), but his deeply empathetic poems cover the full range of emotion to arrive at hope. There is grief, to be sure, in Patrick Daly's new poetry collection, especially associated with the madness of war and its aftermath. And horses, yes, along with many other animals, all with wisdom to offer. But most of all there is language, the love of it and the skillful use of it, as in the opening poem "Words" in which he wishes to learn the language of trees, "But the words of trees / are so large we cannot hear them." Perhaps not, but in Daly's poetry, we nevertheless can sense that wider world. Writing in the foreword to the book, J. David Cummings observes that "Empathy is the rich center of all the poems in this book," the "hidden alchemy" by which Daly works this wonder, such that in the end it is not grief that we take away from these poems, but hope. Poetry. Literary Nonfiction.
Download or read book Underflows written by Cleo Wölfle Hazard and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2022-03-14 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rivers host vibrant multispecies communities in their waters and along their banks, and, according to queer-trans-feminist river scientist Cleo Wölfle Hazard, their future vitality requires centering the values of justice, sovereignty, and dynamism. At the intersection of river sciences, queer and trans theory, and environmental justice, Underflows explores river cultures and politics at five sites of water conflict and restoration in California, Oregon, and Washington. Incorporating work with salmon, beaver, and floodplain recovery projects, Wölfle Hazard weaves narratives about innovative field research practices with an affectively oriented queer and trans focus on love and grief for rivers and fish. Drawing on the idea of underflows—the parts of a river’s flow that can’t be seen, the underground currents that seep through soil or rise from aquifers through cracks in bedrock—Wölfle Hazard elucidates the underflows in river cultures, sciences, and politics where Native nations and marginalized communities fight to protect rivers. The result is a deeply moving account of why rivers matter for queer and trans life, offering critical insights that point to innovative ways of doing science that disrupt settler colonialism and new visions for justice in river governance.
Download or read book Black River written by S. M. Hulse and published by HMH. This book was released on 2015-01-20 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This novel of sorrow and suspense, set in rural Montana, is “a complex and powerful story—put Black River on the must-read list” (The Seattle Times). Wes Carver returns to his hometown—Black River, Montana—with two things: his wife’s ashes and a letter from the parole board. The convict who once held him hostage during a prison riot is up for release. For years, Wes earned his living as a correction officer and found his joy playing the fiddle. But the uprising shook Wes’s faith and robbed him of his music; now he must decide if his attacker should walk free. With “lovely rhythms, spare language, tenderness, and flashes of rage,” S. M. Hulse shows us the heart and darkness of an American town, and one man’s struggle to find forgiveness in the wake of evil (Los Angeles Review of Books).
Download or read book Bouncing Back written by Joan Rivers and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-08-31 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fiercely honest and moving story of how Joan Rivers, one of comedy's greatest stars, survived the worst that life could throw at her, how she hit bottom and then made it back to the top. "There are many self-help books by Ph.D's, but I hold a different degree: an I.B.T.I.A. — I've Been Through It All. This degree comes not on parchment but on gauze, and it entitles me to tell you that there is a way to get through any misfortune." —From Bouncing Back Survival stratagems from Joan Rivers Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger And always remember: Surviving is the best revenge Look at Alexander Graham Bell, who did 22,000 experiments before he hit on the telephone. Just a few more and he would have had call waiting Whenever I hit bottom, the only thing I think of was set down by Jerome Kern: Pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over again. Dr. Kevorkian will get no call from me, unless I think he'd look good in a brooch.
